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Foreword – Home and Back Again

Here we are, issue #2! Released on… September 19th? That’s not right! Way too late in the month, no? This was driving me nuts for most of the month but there was no helping it- my wife and I visited our friends and family in Montreal at the beginning of the month, so I’ve been busy! I know it really doesn’t matter and probably none of you care, but I’d like to eventually work it out to be more in the beginning of the month. We’ll see if I manage!

Travelling to Montreal was interesting. It’s an amazing city that I really like, but after living in Tokyo for around 18 months, I forgot some of the uglier bits. The streets are so wide and car-centric at all times, there’s an absurd amount of litter in the streets despite widely available garbage cans, food is expensive, and convenience stores suck ass. I felt like my neighborhood was about 80% as cool as I remembered it being, but thankfully our Montreal apartment (currently loaned out to my cousin) was more like 110% as cute as I remembered. I’ll take it!

Naturally, we made a huge effort to see as many of our friends and family as we could, which was great and extremely tiring. One of my grandmothers reminded me that she’d be dead soon, which she had also said when we left a year and a half before (I’ll believe it when I see it!) My brother has planned to come visit me in January, which I’m super jazzed for because that means a lot of fishing. Sad stuff too, of course. Seeing our young niece and understanding that she’ll be five years old the next time we’ll see her was tough. One of my grandfathers was in not-so-good shape, and we were thankfully able to visit him in the hospital while we were there (he’s thankfully returned home, at least). We sadly have a shitload of family who loves us very much, so just like last time there were many difficult goodbyes. Tears were shed, for sure.

Returning to Japan really made my wife and I feel sad all over again, but about the limited time we have here. We still have close to two and a half years, so it’s far from over, but it’s scary to be approaching the halfway point now that we know how much we love it here. Japan’s public healthcare is very accessible and being able to see a doctor within a week is amazing. Restaurants and domestically produced food are super affordable and we still haven’t grown tired of the more “standard” foods like gyudon or any form of fried anything. Doujin events and comic markets are a lot of fun and frankly barely exist at all in North America (artist alleys at conventions dealing mainly in prints and pins sadly do absolutely nothing for me), and local game events are quite different too.

Still, we’re so lucky to have this opportunity. I’m making this sound like we’re just depressed all the time but we really are having an amazing time and we’re generally happier than usual. Lots still to do and see around the country, and we’ll try to make the most of it! I personally really hope that while we’re here I’ll be able to ship another game with a Japanese localization this time so I can show it at a Japanese game event! Just gotta’, you know, finish another game. Not like that’s a huge task or anything, right? 😛

There were a few gaming events recently I’d like to touch on, firstly the August 27th Nintendo Partner Direct– hot damn that was a good one. Castlevania, Yakuza, Atelier, Rune Factory, and Marvel? Nintendo has really become such a well oiled machine with these things, I feel like it’s been quite a while since I didn’t enjoy one of these! I actually ended up watching this one with my mum in Canada, and she recognized some stuff, which was fun! For the trip to Canada I had naively brought along two short metroidvanias on my Switch with full intent to finish both of them- Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth and Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony. Konami announcing and releasing the Castlevania: Dominus Collection literally two days into my trip completely dashed my plans to even touch either of them, as I spent most of my remaining time playing games revisiting the DS Castlevanias (still mostly fabulous games, by the way). I’m super jazzed for Yakuza: Kiwami on Switch, too! I streamed my way through Yakuza Zero back in the day and never got around to the first Kiwami (having somewhat played the original Yakuza in highschool), so finally getting a new portable Yakuza game and it being the exact one I’d want it to be felt pretty lucky!

The other big gaming event… well, you know the one. $700 US bucks for a PS5 Pro with no included disc drive, and the price is even tougher to stomach outside of America. I have zero doubt that many games will legitimately look and run a lot better and smoother. As a longtime PS4 Pro enjoyer, I thought it was a really nice upgrade, and I don’t think I really have bad things to say about the PS5 Pro itself except to complain that the disc drive isn’t built in. The price, however, that’s tough. If I’m not mistaken, the standard PS5 and Xbox Series X have staunchly held at $500 USD since launch, with the only price “drops” coing in form of disc drive-less versions (both companies offer a $450 USD digital only machine, putting aside the Series S which is in another price and power category). Xbox even announced a disc drive-included 2TB Series X at $600 USD in August, only one month ago! I think that the sad truth is that anyone expecting the price to come in at $600 USD or lower was fooliong themself.

Computer hardware just isn’t coming down in price the way it used to be. This is something Phil Spencer communicated very clearly around the launch of the Series consoles as an argument for providing Series S up-front; “[…] you’re not going to be able to start with a console that’s $500 thinking it’s gonna get to 200 bucks. That won’t happen. […] It’s not the way it used to be where you could take a spec and then ride it out over 10 years and ride the price points down. It’s why you see console pricing relatively flat.” It’s a sad state of affairs, and even harder to stomach with how much of a pinch I know we’re all feeling financially. PS5 Pro, thankfully, is not a replacement for PS5, and is probably expected to sell to less than 20% of people who would buy a new PlayStation anyways seeing as Sony were happy with PS4 Pro sales being what they were. I don’t have much of an issue with PS5 Pro simply being expensive, but I gotta’ say that the situation isn’t fun either. It would have been a nice token to offer some digital titles with it, or really any sort of low cost pack-in to try saying “hey, we know this is expensive so you can at least have this as a little treat”. Right now it feels to me very much like they’re trying to pinch pennies at a time when they’re mad profitable, and the optics are real bad for them. I don’t personally think I’m going to get a PS5 Pro simply because it’s an expense I can really do without (selling my PS5 would bring it down by probably $400+ CAD, but it’s still a lot), but I will side-eye with envy how shiny some of those games are going to look. The more important question that I’m sure is on all of our mind is PS6 pricing, and that… well, that’s not going to be a fun one.

-Liam

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September 2024 Articles

Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind
tl;dr: A good sequel that does a lot to differentiate itself from its predecessor, but struggles to fully eclipse it, despite strong steps forward.